Jackson_TP1

On Thursday I met with Jasem for our first tutoring session. While we had met briefly during last Tuesday's tea time, the hustle and bustle of everything going on prevented me from getting to know him as well as I had wanted. I met him after his classes at the CIES and told him that, if he didn't mind, I'd like to take him to one of the nicer buildings (The Johnson building for interior design) on campus so that he could get a feel of some of the cool, relatively unknown spots that FSU has to offer. Once we got there we began to get to know each other a little bit more intimately. We talked about our childhoods, our current studies, and our future goals and aspirations in life. I learned that he has already passed the TOEFL exam which I thought was outstanding and that he had already sent in three college applications in order to pursuit his dreams of becoming a chemical engineer. After we had spoken for roughly half an hour about our personal lives, I asked him what he felt he needed the most help with. I could tell through our conversation that his listening and speaking skills were sufficiently advanced so I was not surprised when he said that what he really wanted to work on was his reading, writing, and grammar skills. What I was particularly surprised about was that, even though his speaking and listening were very advanced, his knowledge of grammar rules were very basic (He could not identify the differences between nouns, verbs, and adjectives). 

What really struck me as special about our first meeting was Jasem's use of an american saying that I had taught him in passing early in the lesson. In our conversation about what his goals were and where he wanted to go to school I said "you'll cross that bridge when you get there." I could see that he did not understand the meaning and went on to explain to him just how and when the saying is used. At the end of our lesson, when we were planning on what grammar points we would cover next (adverbs, pronouns, as well as a brief review of nouns, adjs, and verbs) he pointed to the other grammar rules on this list provided in Snow and said "we will cross that bridge when we get there". His immediate retention, understanding, and use of an American saying which he had never heard before was stunning and it gave us both a strong sense of gratification being able to see the immediate benefits of our tutor/tutee relationship.